Noah Calhoun regularly visits Allie Nelson who is in a nursing home because of Alzheimer's. He reads to her from an old, faded notebook containing the account of a young couple, how they met, fell in love, and confronted obstacles to their happiness. It is their own story and sometimes she remembers.

"On Mars, a scientist experiments with a new engine that will one day become the drive that fuels humanity's journey into the stars. On an asteroid station, a group of prisoners are oblivious to the catastrophe that awaits them. On a future Earth beset by overpopulation, pollution, and poverty, a crime boss desperately seeks to find a way off planet. On an alien world, a human family struggles to establish a colony and make a new home. All these stories...